HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs IBM XIV comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and IBM are both solutions in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.1, while IBM is ranked #10. Hewlett Packard Enterprise holds a 9.6% mindshare in MS, compared to IBM’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Read 302 HPE 3PAR StoreServ reviews

1,986 Views
688 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM XIV

Read 6 IBM XIV reviews

139 Views
71 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

IBM XIV

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 2, 2025

IBM XIV and HPE 3PAR StoreServ are competing products in enterprise storage solutions. HPE 3PAR StoreServ tends to have the upper hand with its advanced features, although IBM XIV is notable for its cost-effectiveness.

Features: IBM XIV offers easy scalability, robust data protection, and predictable latency which makes it suitable for dynamic environments. HPE 3PAR StoreServ provides advanced virtualization, efficient data storage optimization, and tiered storage to enhance performance and utility. Additionally, its intuitive management and robust architecture support complex enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: IBM XIV could enhance its initial setup process and expand its feature set to include more advanced data handling options. Improvements in licensing flexibility could also make it more attractive. HPE 3PAR StoreServ, on the other hand, could work on reducing its higher upfront costs. Enhancing user simplicity and optimizing support responsiveness could also benefit users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HPE 3PAR StoreServ offers a streamlined deployment process with proactive customer support, which aids in smoother organizational transitions. In contrast, IBM XIV provides straightforward setup steps but often requires more initial effort. The proactive service model of HPE gives it an edge in deployment efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: IBM XIV is attractive for budget-conscious enterprises with its lower setup costs and favorable ROI due to economical scaling. HPE 3PAR StoreServ, although requiring higher initial investment, offers long-term value from advanced features and data efficiency that justify its cost. The principal financial distinction is HPE's higher initial expenditure offset by potential operational ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

302

Ranking in other categories

NAS (7th), All-Flash Storage (14th)

IBM XIV

Ranking in Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

10th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Modular SAN (Storage Area Network) category, the mindshare of HPE 3PAR StoreServ is 9.6%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM XIV is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Saqib

System Engineer at Hybrid Tech

Uninterrupted upgrades accelerate performance with good support

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. It should be noted that in Pakistan, some parts are not readily available, and we need to import them from Singapore or other countries. We encountered an issue with a customer where the midplane failed and was not available. We had to wait for several days for a replacement, even in a 24/7 support case. Additionally, we faced motherboard failures in the customer's environment, encountering two motherboard failures simultaneously. We obtained one motherboard immediately, yet had to wait ten days for another. These issues should have been resolved promptly given the 24/7 support level.

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Ajith Kandaramage

IT Operation Engineer at HNB

Good value for money but issues with modular scaling

IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness I've been using IBM XIV for two and a half years. IBM XIV is stable. IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We can quickly see performance per CPG and per LUN. You can drill right down to see actual performance to the virtual volumes themselves. That's really good."

"I like that 3PAR can remake the disk online. That's one of the best features because when we first started, that was the best. The team provisioning feature was also a good one. Those features are the best for me, provisioning and online optimization, and the tier you can have for storage."

"If you can handle the IOPS, throughput is a natural byproduct. Usually, IOPS is where you are capped. HPE has done a great job in making sure that our IOP-intensive EMRs stay up and running. We have really good performance on them."

"Valuable features include the intuitiveness of the SAN itself, a lot of the built-in logic and functionality, the tiering that it uses to determine what type of disk is best for the various types of workloads, and the automation that is built in. It's also easy to manage."

"The technical support is good."

"Proactive support. Before we notice that there's a problem in the storage, or any part, any hard disk, they already notify us, and within four hours, the product is delivered. Within the next hour after product delivery, the engineer is available to support me."

"In the deployment of virtual servers, I can have a new VM up and running in 15 minutes, run the patches, then done. I routinely fire up base images that I have for my servers: Server 2008 R2, 2012 R2, and 2016. I routinely fire those base images up and do all the updates, then prep them again for cloning. With 3PAR, we definitely have the performance to do that. Those images I do keep on SSD just to have that performance to deploy a new VM."

"It has been very stable. We've had very minor issues, but I've loved how HPE is proactive on letting us know. Usually, they let us know before we notice it ourselves and they already have a solution for us. It has been great that way."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pros

"Very easy to produce reporting data (Snaps). Very easy and fast for provisioning devices and Remote mirroring."

"Installation is amazingly easy."

"Hands down, this is the easiest storage platform on the market to manage."

"The performance and robustness of the systems are very good."

"As it spreads, a chuck of 1MB across the board means using all available spindles on the backend."

"IBM XIV's most valuable features are NVME, especially when it comes to de-duplication, compression, and responsiveness."

Cons

"HPE gives you how to get everything going, but it would be nice if they could go a little deeper sometimes. That is always the case: To get the value-add, you have to pay for those services."

"We are waiting for compression."

"Anything new can be complex. There were some things in the initial deployment that I was not happy about. One of my directives was, "However, it's configured, ensure that it can never be overprovisioned." That one key thing was overlooked. This is why I had to have a support call last year, because it actually became overprovisioned and I had to move some stuff around."

"I would like to see the reliability improve. While it has been a good product, the QA of the product could be done a little more thoroughly."

"If HPE 3PAR could handle NAS and all things related to NAS, you would not need to have a mixture of different storages, storage boxes, one solution could fit all."

"Although we experienced malfunctions where a virus was running and it failed."

"In the next release, I would like them to make it a little easier to find where everything is in the new console. It now has the OneView look and sometimes I don't think the OneView look is enough. It's too different from the original console that was a separate system."

"The interface to manage it could be improved. I was looking at OneView. Something basic like that should be available with the 3PAR. OneView has all the bells and whistles, all the features, but I think something basic and similar to that should be come with the 3PAR, at least for monitoring managing it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ cons

"IBM XIV's scalability is adequate for our requirements, but because it's modular, you can't scale to larger requirements."

"Until the drive is replaced, the pool_resizing is locked."

"I would rather have a web GUI served directly from the unit, and a CLI accessible directly through SSH."

"The change form synchronous mirroring to asynchronous (and vice versa) without reconfiguration from scratch would be helpful."

"This product was not a good fit for our organization as we have a ton of latency sensitive applications and XIV was not able to keep up with IO + latency demand."

"I encountered stability (performance) issues during enclosure or disk rebuild. Also some power supply issues due to malfunctions of circuits. Sometimes "internal" Snap sessions hang and consume pool capacity."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is quite difficult to decide on the cost. At one point, I was the project lead to cover with some people, but the price was important and we had its compression calculated. At that moment, it was fair because that was one of the things moving their product due to the cost of HPE 3PAR StoreServ as they were competing with Hitachi and IBM A9000, which I'm not sure if is still available."

"The cost is reasonable given that the licensing is all included once you purchase it."

"We went with 3PAR because we have HP-UX systems. Since we already knew HP-UX, they offered us a significantly cheaper solution than the one that we had for storage."

"We have seen ROI. While the costs were quite high at the time of purchase for our environment, the ease of use and the fact that it hasn't failed all the time, working fine, that makes it worth buying."

"Take advantage of what HPE offers as far as professional services, and this will help you make the right decision."

"This solution is expensive. We pay every year for support. It's a lump sum because we pay for data center support services, and everything is included in one."

"Since the prices of the flash storage has gone down tremendously, I would definitely recommend going for the all-flash storage array or 3PAR. It is a big expensive even now, but it will be the future of all industries."

"It's very reliable and it was cost competitive with other arrays at the time that we purchased it."

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is straightforward."

"No-license-required policy, unlike others where you need a license for everything. Just pay once and forget about licenses."

"If you are going to use the product behind an SVC, IBM will price the units lower, since you are likely not to use any of the advanced copy services."

"We have a five-year total cost of ownership where we pay an initial amount and then annually for maintenance."

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Comparison Review

it_user182013

Federal Civ/Intel Engineering Lead at Rubrik

May 1, 2015

Measuring Up: EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR

Leading up to EMC World 2015, IT Central Station asked how I would compare EMC XtremIO and HP 3PAR. Until recently, the flash storage conversation in my organization and many others has centered on XtremIO and Pure Storage, the leaders of the all-flash array (AFA) space. To that end, I've written a…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

83%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspective, it is reliable, easy to set up, stable, and offers quality block storage. All...

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What do you like most about HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

The compression features are good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE 3PAR StoreServ?

It is expensive, however, when we compare it to the features provided by HPE, the price-to-performance ratio is very good.

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Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

HPE Primera vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 6% of the time

HPE MSA vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

Dell Unity XT vs HPE 3PAR StoreServ

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE 3PAR StoreServ Competitors

IBM FlashSystem vs IBM XIV

Compared 100% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ

May 2025

Download HPE 3PAR StoreServ product report

Buyer's Guide

Modular SAN (Storage Area Network)

April 2025

Download IBM XIV product report

Also Known As

HPE 3PAR Flash Storage, InServ, Storeserv, 3PAR Flash Storage, HP Enterprise Storage, 3PAR Flash Array, HP 3PAR Flash Storage

XIV

Overview

HPE 3PAR StoreServ is an AI-driven storage solution that prevents issues before they occur by learning and adjusting in real time. The solution offers a tier-1 all-flash foundation for mission-critical workloads. HPE 3PAR StoreServ was designed with more than 3M IOPS and consistent sub-ms latency. It aims to transform midrange and enterprise deployments with solutions that scale from a few TBs to more than 20PBs. In addition, the solution is built to modernize data centers and is made to handle unpredictable workloads effortlessly. By implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you gain automated and rapid provisioning, hardware-accelerated deduplication and compression, and a multi-tenant design.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Features

HPE 3PAR StoreServ has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Flexibility: With HPE 3PAR StoreServ, you can easily deploy highly configurable, scale-out storage for multi-tenant workloads.

Always-on availability for your data: HPE 3PAR StoreServ includes an always-on resilient storage infrastructure for your hypervisors and applications. In addition, with Peer Persistence, your virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and data can move freely across data centers rather than being constrained by their physical boundaries.

Fast, scalable performance: HPE 3PAR StoreServ enables you to accelerate consistent mixed-workload performance and also provides necessary QoS levels that are optimized for your highest priority applications.

Performance insights: HPE 3PAR StoreServ helps you gain performance insights in real time, and anticipate as well as prevent issues across the infrastructure stack by utilizing cross-stack analytics.

Flash optimized data protection: With tier-1 data services, multi-tenant security, and copy data management, you can avoid downtime.

Seamless data mobility: HPE 3PAR StoreServ makes it possible for you to not only experience converged data protection, but also experience seamless data mobility services, at flash speed, from the edge to the cloud.

HPE 3PAR StoreServ Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing HPE 3PAR StoreServ. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to manage. The web interface to manage the units is a great asset and one that makes managing storage easy.

User-friendly GUI

Exceptionally fast and well-managed replication
Low latency

Hybrid storage gives you the ability to assign different roles to different types of storage arrays inside one enclosure

Both file-level and block-level replication

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the HPE 3PAR StoreServ solution.

A SAN Consultant at a tech services company says, “One of the features that I like the most is the data replication element. The reason I like it is due to the fact that it's pretty clean on replicating data over to a second site. The product stands on its own in heavy enterprise environments. It's easy to make changes without affecting the environment. The solution is very easy to use. The product is very robust and offers very good performance.”

A Storage Manager at a financial services firm mentions, "There are a lot of screens for easy management where you can change some settings. But after a few years, the important settings were better after an upgrade, and all the vendors have other ways to upgrade their systems."

A Senior IT Infrastructure & Data Center Operation Engineer at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) comments, “The adaptive optimization is the biggest feature in 3PAR. 3PAR is very usable with thin volume because it detects zeros while writing. Every time I tell the hypervisor to make the full provisioning, it makes the volume as simple provisioning in 3PAR, not full provisioning.”

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

IBM XIV is a high-end, grid-scale storage system that excels in tuning-free consistent performance, ease of use and exceptional data economics, including inline, and IBM Real-time Compression. IBM XIV is ideal for hybrid cloud, offering predictable service levels for dynamic workloads, simplified scale management, including in multi-tenant environments, flexible consumption models — and robust cloud automation and orchestration through OpenStack, RESTful API and VMware. It offers security and data protection through hot encryption, advanced mirroring and self-healing and investment protection with perpetual licensing.

IBM

Sample Customers

Just Energy, Latisys, team AG, DreamWorks, BlueShore Financial, Erasmus MC

Celero, NaviSite, Technische Universit_t Mªnchen, Netflix Inc., Muhr und Bender KG, Pelephone Communications

Buyer's Guide

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

April 2025

Free Report: HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs. IBM XIV

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